Spoonfighter junior is two. I would like to say that he is growing like a weed, but he’s really short and is barely growing at all. So, really, he’s growing more like our lawn. Which is weird because we didn’t put nearly as much fertilizer on our lawn.

He’s not into food, so much. We’re so desperate to get him to eat that we’ll literally let him eat anything he decides to put in his mouth, short of black tar heroin. (It’s a pain in the a** to get out of his clothes.) Pretty much all he likes are donuts and hot dogs. And even to get him to eat hot dogs we have to lie to him and tell him that it’s the meat of some exotic animal. One time we cut the hot dog into long, curved slivers and told him that it was elephant trunk.

His favorites so far are silver back gorilla and baby seal. I don’t know what we’re going to do when we run out of endangered species. We’ll have to get creative, I suppose. “Look! It’s Kanga from your Winnie the Pooh book, remember? Nummy nummy!” (Wait, I’ve already used that one. Yes, I’m a horrible parent.) We recently took him to the zoo for the first time, and I wonder if he was thinking, “Oh, a giraffe. I love giraffe.”

You know, I like the zoo, but it would be a lot better if it was more like Costco or Sam’s Club. You’d go up to an animal enclosure and there’d be this little old lady wearing a hair net and holding a plate full of samples. “Here - try some of this snow leopard. It’s very lean, and it’s on sale today for $5.99 a pound.” Awesome!

The other thing that sucks is that the animals are all pretty lazy. Poke ‘em with sticks or something. Make ‘em do tricks! It’s hard to keep a little kid interested in a lion that sits around like it’s on welfare.

ME: “Hey, loooook! What is that? Is that a lion?”
BOY: “Squiwwel, Daddy! Squiwwel! LOOK DA SQUIWWEL!”
ME: “Yes, that is a squirrel. But don’t you want to see the lion?”
BOY: “Squiwwel squiwwel squiwwel sqiwwel! Yay!”
ME: “HEY - I DIDN’T JUST SHELL OUT 80 FREAKIN BUCKS SO YOU CAN LOOK AT THE LITTLE BEASTS THAT GO THROUGH OUR FREAKIN GARBAGE. LOOK AT THE !@#%!^% LION!!”
BOY: “Bird, Daddy! LOOK DA BIRD!”

I didn’t actually yell at him. I’m really a good parent. When the lions didn’t work out, I bought us tickets for the little train that goes around the zoo. He was totally hooked and threw a fit when the ride ended. This presented a parenting dilemma. I didn’t want to reward bad behavior, but I couldn’t bear to see his sad little face, so I chose a creative “third way.” I slipped the driver of the train fifty bucks and told him not to stop. Then I went home and took a nap.

(Ha ha, I am so just kidding, Ms. Child Welfare Officer.)

So my wife is going to see the Sex And The City movie tonight with a bunch of her girlfriends. Apparently women all across America are doing the same thing, and men all across America are breathing a collective sigh of relief that they aren’t being dragged down to the movie theater for Date Night, like they were for Pride and Prejudice.*

I’ve actually heard that there are some men out there who are planning on seeing it. Let me just say this: if you are (1) a dude, and (2) going to see Sex And The City, and (3) this decision is actually voluntary (ie., terrorists are not holding a gun to your head and/or you will not be getting sex from your spouse in exchange for your attendance) your manhood is hereby revoked. Please drop it off at the nearest ladies bathroom or scrapbook store. (You should also do this if you voted for David Archuletta at any point during the past season of American Idol.)

Ok, ok - I’ve never actually watched an episode of Sex And The City, but I don’t need to in order to know that it’s not exactly oriented towards the male mind. First of all, if guys had made a show for guys called Sex And The City, it would have been on much later at night and it would have been about strippers. And I would have gotten in trouble for knowing anything about it.

Some very basic research reveals that the show is, in fact, largely about shoes. And someone named Carrie, and her three friends, and all their dysfunctional relationships. They’re all really messed up, but they’re rich, glamorous, and sexy, too. So they’re just like normal middle-aged women, except for the rich, glamorous, and sexy part. Oh, and there’s this dude named Mr. Big. I think maybe he’s her pimp. I’m not sure. Not a single one of these characters has superpowers, carries a really big gun, or is a ninja, so why the hell anyone would want to watch the TV show, let alone the movie, is beyond me. Anyway, I just saved you ten bucks. You can thank me later.

* Ok, seriously, why couldn’t Pride and Prejudice have been a Girls Night Out instead of Chick Flick Date Night? I had to employ my trusty “beer belly” to get through it.

I have a recommendation. Don’t turn 30. In fact, stay away from 29, too, just to be safe. If you’re reading this too late, well, I’m very sorry.

I reached my 29th birthday without any significant physical problems. I was never gifted as an athlete, but also seemed to be blessed with a degree of robustness. I could eat what I wanted, and do what I wanted, and never worried about getting fat, sick, or injured.

But several months before turning 30, things began to change. I’m starting to feel like the used cars I buy. Here’s a list of stuff that’s broken (and definately out of warranty) in the last two years:

1) I’ve gotten approximately 58 cavities and had two teeth removed.
2) I can no longer eat spicy food. Water gives me heart burn, now.
3) I’ve gained 20 lbs. (But then, who hasn’t.)
4) The formerly 20/10 vision in my right eye is now 20/11,436, and I have so many floaters that the view from inside my head looks like I’m snorkeling in a toilet bowl.
5) I injured my knee in a risky snowboarding maneuver known as “going in a straight line”.
6) I broke my hip.
6) My shoulders and back pop when I raise my arms over my head to put on my glasses.

At this rate of system failure, I’ll be having walker races in the hall of my nursing home by the time I’m 40.

I’m looking for a new job. After seven years of my loyal service and/or web-surfing, the corporation eliminated my position.

I wasn’t unhappy about it. I had already decided that it was time to move on, and if they wanted to finance my job search with a severance package (a bribe the corporation gives a departing employee so he won’t swing by later with an assault rifle and 2,000 rounds of armor-piercing ammo), then so much the better.

The only problem is that every job I’m qualified for appears to involve, well, work. I know - I should be a good little American and happily work 80 hours a week, using my spare time to finish the basement and landscape the yard. But I’ve done a lot of work over the years, and I think it’s overrated.

People have been working since the dawn of history. Probably earlier, in fact, because even back then, there was probably a workaholic caveman who got to work while it was still dark. At first, everyone had the same job, gathering or hunting for food. People probably didn’t even think of it as work. It was just something you had to do in order to eat. Like picking a restaurant, nowadays. When enough food had been gathered, and everyone had eaten, then they just sat around the cave, drawing pictures on the walls and making tools.

Then someone had an idea. He realized that he liked making things more than he liked hunting and gathering, and it occurred to him that if someone else were willing to gather enough food for two people, he could make enough tools for two people, and both of them would be happier. “Hey, Thag. You know how much I hate gathering food, right? How about you gather enough nuts and berries for both of us, and I’ll give you this Ford Taurus.” And that was how the used-car-salesman job was invented. It is also interesting to note that the resale value of Fords is exactly the same.

Now here we are, twenty thousand years later, and we have so many different kinds of jobs that hardly anyone remembers that most of them are desperate attempts to avoid having to gather, grow or hunt your own food. Unless you’re a farmer, in which case you’ve made very little progress. Sorry.

In the past, you at least had the ritual of receiving and depositing a paycheck, and paying the bills, to remind you why you work. Now there’s direct deposit. And automatic bill-pay. You have to remind yourself that the reason you sit in a little box with a desk and drink eight hours of coffee, five days a week, is not because you are an incredibly dull person, but because if you don’t the bank will take your house. Your dullness is an unfortunate side-effect.

What scares me about losing my job is not that I won’t find another job like the one I had. It’s that I will. When I started with the company, my job didn’t pay very well, but it made sense. There was an obvious, logical connection between the work I performed and the successful operation of the company. After years of moving upwards in a company that frequently reorganized, refocused and restructured, any such connection eventually was lured into a dark conference room and tortured to death. I couldn’t have described my job without using a lot of made up words and acronyms, and I couldn’t have told you how it helped the corporation without using a shovel.

One time, a financial analyst asked me to estimate the number of hours expended for a particular project. I calculated, to my dismay, that I had spent 542 hours cajoling, begging and threatening three other people into performing 84 hours of actual labor that would have taken me 40 hours to complete had I been allowed to do it all myself. And that doesn’t include the 7.3 hours of drinking it took me to get over the whole affair.

Until I’m able to figure out how to get paid for doing absolutely no work at all, such as by working for the federal government*, I am going to try to find a job that provides me a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the satisfaction of knowing that I’m actually producing something valuable. And then I’m going to win the lottery, photograph the Yeti, and develop a weight-loss plan which doesn’t require eating less or exercising.

* If you’re a hiring manager for the federal government, please note that this statement does not reflect my actual view of the federal government or any of its parts, and was, in fact, almost certainly inserted by evil hackers. Please hire me.

Note: I am honestly not sure who I’m insulting here. - SF

As you no doubt know by now, Israel has invaded Lebanon in an effort to find Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ new baby, Suri, who apparently was hustled away minutes after birth and has never been seen by any living human beings, only Scientologists.

But what I am really concerned with, however, is the plight of the world’s Atheists, who - to this very day - do not have a religion of their own.

In my humble* opinion, it is downright descriminatory that Atheists have been denied their basic human right to have a religion, simply because they don’t believe in God.

Many people seem to think that religion is, if nothing else, a belief in some sort of god. How bigoted. Atheists are human beings, just like people who do believe in a god, and they have a right to all the same privileges that god-believers enjoy. They have a right to religion just like everyone else.

Religion is so much more than a divine being. Religon is whacky hats and robes, incense, holy water, ancient scriptures and spiffy temples. Religion is prophets and lists of things that you can’t do, holy wars and people on TV with big hair. Don’t Atheists have a right to these things, too?

The answer, I say, is a resounding YES!! I forsee a day when Athiests will gather together in special buildings to sing beautiful hymns about not believing in anything, when little boy Atheists and little girl Atheists will sit, spellbound, listening to an adult Atheist tell the stories of ancient, mighty unbelievers, using a felt board. I forsee a day when groups of Atheists will go door-to-door, interrupting people in the middle of their favorite TV shows, to tell them about nothing.

Many of you who read this will laugh. But one day - one glorious day - this dream will be a reality.

Amen. Let us pray. whisper words to nobody in particular.

* not

I am trying to make up my mind about the on-going debate over our illegal-immigrant population. Congress tried to make it illegal to be here illegally (scratches head) and people of Hispanic origin are staging massive protests around the country to demand the right to clean our toilets and serve us french fries provide a better life for their family. It must really suck to live in Mexico. Regardless of your take on the issue, you gotta respect them for what they go through to be here. (Although, if Mexico is so bad that you’d walk across a desert, live in a house with 27 other people, and work four crappy jobs at once - why would you drive everywhere flying the Mexican flag? Or wave one at a rally? I must be missing something.)

To be honest, I would be happy to grant them all amnesty, as long as we could ban that polka music. I’m serious. They can have citizenship and free health care and maybe even a complimentary, luxury pickup with six little Mexican flags and their last name in big decals across the back window. Just please, no more polka. I want to cry whenever I hear it, it’s so awful.

That’s something the average American could get behind. If the pro-illegal-immigrant faction offered that as an olive branch, they’d be amazed by how quickly the issue was settled: “No more tubas and accordions? Done. What color should we paint your new pickup truck? Green, white and red? No es problema.”

… I’m a Moron.

You know that classic CLM* where you’re replying to an email with some smart-ass comment, intending it for a single person you trust, but instead you hit “reply-all” and send it to the whole company? Yeah - I did that, this week.

I put my own special sauce on the standard entree, though. In a panic, I sent out an apology to everyone. Then I checked my inbox. There was a message from the email system stating that (for technical reasons I won’t go into) the email system blocked my first reply, the one I was worried about. But it happily sent out my apology - which included the original email and my smart-ass comment - to everyone.

Nothing bad appears to have happened, other than having my techie-street-cred cut in half for being such a bone-head. I received a handful of emails from people saying that they didn’t get the email for which I was apologizing (no one did), but that they agreed with my comment and were glad someone actually said it. I can only hope the VP agrees.

* career limiting move